Sale of hoax artist's work should lay him to rest, says his creator

Seeking closure: William Boyd with Tate's Bridge No 114, which could fetch £5,000

An artist at the heart of one of the biggest cultural hoaxes of all time has produced a series of new works.

The drawings are from the so-called bridge sequence by Nat Tate - the fictional artist created by novelist William Boyd 13 years ago.

Boyd creates the art in the name of Tate, whose purported biography he wrote and launched with the help of David Bowie and the artist Jeff Koons.

Tate was reportedly an abstract expressionist who destroyed 99 per cent of his work before committing suicide. Some in the art world claimed to have known him when the biography was published.

Boyd admits today that his fictional creation took on a life of its own that he now hopes to lay to rest by selling one of Tate's drawings for charity at Sotheby's next Wednesday. Yet he also fears that the sale of Bridge No 114, with an estimate of £3,000 to £5,000, looks set to stimulate interest further. The writer of Any Human Heart said he has even been approached by galleries who want to exhibit Nat Tate's work. "I created a benign Frankenstein's monster. I'm being run by my fictional creation and I now hope to bring about some kind of closure," he said.

"It's a curious limbo. I want it to die in a way but have a feeling it may just give it new energy. All I was originally trying to show was how something fictitious could be as real as something real."

But the public had liked the notion that the intelligentsia had been fooled. "The public love hoaxes. There is something in the human spirit or psyche that likes it if people get their come-uppance. It's the emperor's new clothes syndrome."

The work that will be auctioned is the only one of Tate's to be sold. Three were in the original biography and others have been created by Boyd (Tate) to give to friends and family on special occasions.

Boyd said he thought Tate's drawings were better than those of Jackson Pollock "to be sure". "My own feeling is that the only real artist of true merit and near genius in the abstract expressionist school is Willem de Kooning."